Conventional imaging devices such as digital cameras and video cameras generally use solid-state image sensors such as CCD image sensors and CMOS image sensors. Solid-state image sensors may include defective pixels that occur in a manufacturing process. Such defective pixels are one of the causes of the decreased quality of captured images and the decreased fabrication yield of the solid-state image sensors.
In order to suppress a decrease in the image quality caused by defective pixels, it has been suggested to complement pixel signals corresponding to the defective pixels using pixel signals of other normal pixels. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2008-263521 suggests a method whereby a pair of pixels is selected from among pairs of pixels, each pair of pixels being located so as to sandwich the defective pixel and are adjacent to the defective pixel along the four directions of 0°, 45°, 90°, and 135° in accordance with the ratio between outputs of the pixels, and an average value of the pixel signals of the selected pair is used as an output signal of the defective pixel.
However, with the method of Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2008-263521 whereby the defective pixel is corrected using the pair of pixels selected from among the pairs of pixels, each pair of pixels being located so as to sandwich the defective pixel along the four directions of 0°, 45°, 90°, and 135°, there are cases where the accuracy of the pixel correction value acquired through the complementing process is not necessarily sufficient.